Sunday, October 30, 2011

Panic! Panic! Send Us Money! (Oh. Wait a minute....)

Panic, panic, panic ! Send us your money ! Repent of your environmental sins! The end is near! Confess your planet-warming habits, and bow before the throne of Saint Albert, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee !!!! Purchase carbon credit indulgences from Saint Albert, The One who knows the desires of Gaia the earth-goddess !!!

Recycle your toilet paper !!!Keep burning oil, but send Washington your money as a sign of atonement !!!Goddammit, stop moving around on those freakin' machines ! It infuriates your superiors when you can escape their cages !!

It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.

Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.

The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.

Speaking of "cynical frauds", one of the best ways to detect them is to look and see who flies to Durban, South Africa, next month. Remember the Climate Change conference they had in Copenhagen, the one where there were so many Lear Jets, Gulfstreams, private planes and airliners trying to get into Denmark that they had to park a lot of them elsewhere in Scandinavia? If you fly in an airplane, you aren't concerned about human activity contributing to Global Warming. It really is that simple.

But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.

Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.

In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.

‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’

However, Prof Muller denied warming was at a standstill.

‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.

A graph issued by the BEST project also suggests a continuing steep increase.

You can hit the link at the top to read the rest. None of it matters.No matter what Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell say, we aren't big enough to influence the weather, much less the climate. Yes, we have sinned, but Gaia isn't angry. Here are the lyrics to Monty Python's "Galaxy Song".

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

14 comments:

I'm sure Cedric will arrive soon and bitch you out, so I'll not bother.

BTW - I assume you've seen where a Koch brothers funded study is now reluctantly admitting there may be something to all this climate change hooha (talk about "inconvenient truth"). Soon you'll be the sole survivor on Bullshit Island.

“…sins!...Confess… and bow before the throne of Saint Albert…indulgences from Saint Albert… earth-goddess…”atonement

No. Science is not a religion. Scientists are not priests. NASA is not a cult. But you knew that.

“From London's Daily Mail”

A newspaper. Again. When will you ever learn?Well, was either going to be a newspaper or a blog as your source material. You never use primary sources of information. Only secondary. You always avoid them.

If you fly in an airplane, you aren't concerned about human activity contributing to Global Warming. It really is that simple.

Argument from hypocrisy.(Again.)If you eat supermarket food, if you wear manufactured clothes, if you use medications, if you use the internet, if you print a book, if you take the subway to work, if you turn on the light in your lab, if you launch climate monitoring satellites, if you give power point demonstrations during lectures then you aren’t concerned about human activity contributing to global warming. It is really that simple.Therefore global warming is not happening.Awful.Bad. Terrible logic. When will you learn?

Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row.

And you know this how? By magic? Oh I forgot. You know there’s an ignited academic row because you…read a newspaper. Silly.

In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.

Well, if the Daily Mail obtained something then that settles it.(facepalm)

None of it matters.No matter what Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell say, we aren't big enough to influence the weather, much less the climate.

Who says so? Certainly not NASA.

Oh, and in related news, more than a million people lost power in the Northeast yesterday, October 29th. Snowstorms.

This is related exactly how? When ice cubes form in your freezer, does that disprove global warming too? When it snows in your backyard are you going to jump up and down like a small child and proclaim that global warming is a hoax again? If so, then you will be able to jump up and down every year. I promise. Statistics and data trends are not your friend.

So... You're comparing 10 years of data to 200 years?

Yep. Statistics and data trends and every single scientific community on the planet are not your friends.

The "Daily Mail" (usually known here as "akin to 30 minutes in a lunatic asylum" isn't the best organ for getting information. Opinions, yes. Then again, Cedric's input seems to verge on the hysterical, too.

Whatever really causes climate change, this makes an interesting read. If 200 years of data is enough, how good might 400,000 years be?

Yeah. I'm betting on more cold, just because I can barely remember those Time and Newsweek stories predicting Global Cooling.

Doc,The point of the article is that there has been no warming in about 10 years.

Cedric,I'll try to take these slowly, one at a time, as the schedule permits. What happened to the last editor who dared to put a skeptical article (or one that challenged Warmist Orthodoxy) in a scientific periodical? Was he praised for his honesty? Was he complimented for allowing all sides to be heard? Or was he forced by the priesthood to recant, resign, and repent of his errors in the method familiar to all who have committed heresy?

Formertory,Thanks for posting. I've been asking Cedric about those Tater farms unde the ice in Greenland for years.

Cedric,I've got some more time.... Science is never "settled". Theology is "settled". I think you're aware of that.

Also, who would you expect Professor Curry to go to? The Decline-Hiders? The University Of East Anglia Whitewashers? I think she made the right call by going to the mainstream press.

Even now, Professor Curry is being shown the tools of the Inquisition. Sabbaticals are being yanked. Chairmanships are disappearing. Her office is being relocated to an inconvenient basement. And you can expect a full retraction of her heresies in 5...4...3...2...

Because that's how those people seem to operate. No conspiracy needed. Just potential piles and piles of money.

The "Daily Mail" (usually known here as "akin to 30 minutes in a lunatic asylum" isn't the best organ for getting information.

Personally, I never get my science information from a newspaper. Nor a blog.My standards are higher than that.In all the time I have commented on climatology, I have never tried to support the science from a newspaper. Never. Not any newspaper.On the other hand, our generous host does it all the time. He doesn't seem to understand that maybe (just maybe) that's not a very good idea.

Cedric's input seems to verge on the hysterical, too.

Oh sure. It's "hysterical" of me to ignore newspapers and be more interested in what NASA has to say.

It's "hysterical" of me to point out that science does not work the same as religion and that it's wrong to conflate the two.

It's "hysterical" of me to point out that a local weather event should not be dragged out as evidence that there is not a global trend.

Yeah. I'm betting on more cold, just because I can barely remember those Time and Newsweek stories predicting Global Cooling.

How many times must we go through this before it sinks in?Journalists suck at reporting science. They suck at it now and they sucked at it 40 years ago.

Do you care about what scientists were saying about climate change "x" decades ago? Good.

Are you reaching for a magazine article to support your argument? Bad.

Go to primary sources of information. Put a stake through the PRATT once and for all.

What happened to the last editor who dared to put a skeptical article (or one that challenged Warmist Orthodoxy) in a scientific periodical?

Pejorative.He didn't "dare" anything. There is no "Warmist Orthodoxy". Science is not a religion.

The editor admitted that he fell asleep at the wheel and took responsiblity for it. He did the right thing and resigned.

Was he praised for his honesty?

Why, yes. He was. Openly admitting to a mistake and doing something about it did earn him praise.

Was he complimented for allowing all sides to be heard?

All sides are heard. All the time. The climate deniers just can't cut it where it counts. They are the wannabees. The rare occasions where they sneak out of the nursing home and publish a paper are occasions for pity and not much else.

Or was he forced by the priesthood to recant, resign, and repent of his errors in the method familiar to all who have committed heresy?

Priesthood, recant, repent, heresy? What about altar? Orthodoxy? Sect? High Priest? Mantra?Science is not a religion.

Science is never "settled". Theology is "settled". I think you're aware of that.

And you feel the need to build a strawman because…?

Also, who would you expect Professor Curry to go to?

I’d expect her to do her job for a change. Why do you give a damn what she says? She’s not infallible. She’s not a prophet. Stop giving her a free pass. There are no prophets in science. Instead of just blindly believing her, you should practice some genuine skepticism for a change.

Even now, Professor Curry is being shown the tools of the Inquisition.

Inquisition?More religious terminology?Why do you do it. It’s so dishonest. Science is not a religion. It works differently.

Sabbaticals are being yanked. Chairmanships are disappearing. Her office is being relocated to an inconvenient basement. And you can expect a full retraction of her heresies in 5...4...3...2...

So, naturally, you assume she’s a brave dissident. It never occurs to you that she make be…y’know…wrong.

Because that's how those people seem to operate.

When you say “those people” it sounds very mysterious and vague.

No conspiracy needed. Just potential piles and piles of money.

You invoke a conspiracy every time you say this kind of nonsense.It’s the same nonsense that the HIV deniers spout and the moon landing deniers whine about and what the creationists say. I’ve given you multiple examples of this in the past. Only the labels are different. The excuses are always the same.

The issue with this 10 years of data is that the warming alarmists spliced together thermometer readings with estimates based on tree rings - a very questionable practice.

There is substantial evidence that many of the former and existing temperature sensors had their data polluted by urban heat island effects and other errors in placement in violation of standards of practice. Some sensors are located nowhere near their recorded location.

Data from sensors that showed lower temperatures were "corrected" based on other sensors thousands of miles away.

The original data producing the infamous "hockey stick" has been "lost" along with the algorithm for splicing them together. So the "stick" is not reproducible by contemporary scientists, and the statistical methods cannot be analyzed for errors or robustness.

The alarmists have ignored substantial evidence of a medieval warming followed by a Little Ice Age, demonstrating that climate before the industrial revolution was volatile. Our current temperatures (even if correctly measured) may be part of normal climactic variation.

The confidence bands surrounding the line in the hockey stick are so wide, you could draw nearly any shape you wanted and still fit the data. The confidence bands are wider than the variations in temperature themselves!

Pile on the well-documented efforts by the IPCC to deluge the world with misinformation, including anecdotal information by hikers of melting glaciers, and corruption of the peer-review process at top journals. You have the clear makings of a manufactured crisis. That crisis has a "convenient" bogeyman - production by capitalist societies.

Anthropogenic Global Warming may very well exist, but there is so much pollution in the science, we cannot reasonably say whether it does or not.

Abatement measures are horrifically costly, so taking action when no problem exists would unnecessarily destroy social welfare. To put a human face on that, the destruction of social welfare would KILL millions of people from starvation and other wants, and destroy the standard of living for billions.

Indeed, even if the problem exists, the costs of abatement might well exceed the costs of even the worst effects. And we could mitigate those effects rather than try to stop them. We might prefer to evacuate large parts of Florida and Louisiana rather than cut US GDP by 25% per year!

As for the Argument from Hypocrisy, the issue isn't "global warming isn't real because true believers don't behave as if it is real."

The issue is that the true believers don't behave as if they are true believers. 99% of them don't possess the intellect to understand the information that drives their beliefs. 99% of them couldn't identify the top five most abundant greenhouse gases or name three leading climate scientists.

The other issue is that the "true believers" want OTHER PEOPLE to refrain from emissions and bear the costs, not themselves. This is the sine qua non of leftists.

When they do take remedial measures, such as buying a hybrid car, they don't calculate the net effect on the environment from the embedded carbon in their old vehicle and the net damage from the rare earth metals and nickel used to build their hybrid. All that matters is that they FEEL GOOD about driving a fucking hybrid, and having other people SEE them driving their fucking hybrid. They could easily buy a conventional gasoline vehicle with high fuel efficiency at a lower price and with a lower environmental footprint. They remain culpably ignorant for the sake of demonstration of their flimsy principles.

Nope. NASA and every scientific community on the planet are not "warming alarmists".

There is substantial evidence...

Shame you don't provide any. All you have are newspapers and blogs. All climate denier talking points instantly self-destruct upon contact with primary sources of information. Every one.

So the "stick" is not reproducible by contemporary scientists, and the statistical methods cannot be analyzed for errors or robustness.

Not according to NASA...and every single scientific community on the planet. Reality is not your friend.

The alarmists have ignored...

No. NASA and every single scientific community on the planet cannot be honestly described as "alarmists" The word you are searching for is "scientists".

The confidence bands surrounding the line in the hockey stick are so wide, you could draw nearly any shape you wanted and still fit the data.

Not according to NASA and every single scientific community on the planet. You are making stuff up.

...and corruption of the peer-review process at top journals.

Paranoid fantasy. No details are forthcoming from you.

Anthropogenic Global Warming may very well exist, but there is so much pollution in the science, we cannot reasonably say whether it does or not.

NASA says AGW is real. So does every single scientific community on the planet.

Abatement measures... is clearly a topic you know nothing about. You speak from ignorance. All you have is empty handwaving. Newspapers and blogs don't cut it. The educated don't get their information that way.

As for the Argument from Hypocrisy, the issue isn't "global warming isn't real because true believers don't behave as if it is real."

Yes it is. Read Allen's comments again. He's done it many times before.

99% of them don't possess the intellect to understand the information that drives their beliefs.

NASA has an excellent understanding of the information.

99% of them couldn't identify the top five most abundant greenhouse gases or name three leading climate scientists.

NASA can.

This is the sine qua non of leftists.

(yawn)

When did NASA and every single scientific community get taken over by the leftists?

I watch the news.Yet I don't get my science information from there. If a claim is made then I'm very interested if that claim is supported by primary sources. A science article in a paper makes a good breakfast but a poor dinner.I liked their analogy about steroids and sports to explain statistical analysis.Some people around here fail badly when it comes to understanding basic statistics and figuring out trends.Very badly.(Get ready for snow in your backyard in December and ice cubes in your freezer. Har har.)

Note the following:

The scientist is nobody that I have ever heard of.This is important for two reasons:1) Unlike some people, I don't care about individual scientists. Scientists are not prophets. I go for the big picture.2) Climate deniers always repeat the same tiny number of scientists. There are never any new ones and they are not getting any younger.

I don't care about a journalist's opinions. I care about the source material used. Her source materials are easy to spot in the video.

So you know what I did next?Go on. Guess!

That's right.I googled the scientific community that she mentioned and went to them directly to find out what they had to say in their own words.

I'm a skeptic because of the methodology I use, not because I just want to make myself feel good and just call myself that.Skepticism is a process; not a position.If all you are doing is just checking out newpapers and blogs, then you don't get skepticism at all.

On any scientific issue, I will consult the best, most famous scientific communities out there in a heartbeat.(Cancer research, forensics, biology, vaccines, climatology etc.)